ABSTRACT
Paul Oskar Kristeller was an immensely generous scholar and, along with Eugenio Garin, the twentieth century's outstanding authority on Renaissance philosophy and humanism. Gentile, Cassirer and Saitta were essentially neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian idealists whom W. G. Craven, in revisionary study of Pico, has recently attached as tendentious 'misreaders' of Pico and, by implication, of Ficino too. Given his encyclopedic knowledge of gallery of some of Ficino's contemporaries, it also enabled him to delineate Ficino's profound impact on his age, his voicing of some of its deepest aspirations, preoccupations and convictions. If Kristeller did not himself share these convictions, at least in their totality, it is obvious he was moved by them and by the immense assorted erudition that had sustained them. This was surely close to Kristeller's own humanist credo, and it helps to explain why he was, and why he will continue to be, a supreme authority and an inspiration for all people engaged in teaching medieval and Renaissance texts.
